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Professor Karen Merrill, Advisor

of the requirements for the

Degree in Bachelor of the Arts with Honors

in History

Williams (College

Williamstown, ~dassachusetts

April 17,2006

About two years ago, Karen Merrill first suggested that I write a thesis that

combined two of my great passions, movies and history. For that idea, as well as years of

tutelage, an incredible dedication to helping me become a better scholar, and infinite

antics in I-fistory 243 three years ag9 while encouraging my analytic thinking. He also led

the honors seminar this year, and accomplished both of those tasks with great humor. I

thank him for both his organizational work over the past several months and the levity he

brought to our meetings. All honors seminars should be lucky enough to have him as a

especially Zach Ulman for making fun of me all the time and engaging me in

conversation about college football as often as possible. Guillaume Aubert was always a

helpful presence at seminar meetings and lundly agreed to comment on one of my

Library at Indiana University was instrumental in helping me acquire some archival

material, which the history department here at Williams kindly provided funds for. Also,

and advising over the years.

Ford's rudeness and misanthropic attitude has made me appreciate the kind assistance of

everybody else mentioned here even more. I thank all of my friends who have patiently

partying. They were always willing to help me with my grammar or wording. Four of

title. Two years ago, my brother wrote most of his psychology thesis over one weekend.

express love and gratitude to my parents, David and Ofra Bloch. Many years ago, my

greatly influenced my intellectual development. So I thank both of my parents for their

support and love, and also for paying the tuition bills.

Table of Contents

the Death of the Genre

In his book on Westerns, film critic Philip French related a humorous story about

Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator would often watch Westerns with his subordinates

while providing ideological criticism. Despite his obvious scorn for the values of the

films, he continued to order prints of new releases.' The anecdote is so funny and absurd

that it is hard to imagine it is true. Apocryphal or not, it highlights two features of the

Western: the extent to which it could be a political flashpoint and its potency as a symbol

of American culture. And that was only around mid-century, when the Western was just

beginning to delve into more complex social themes and most reviewers still referred to

movies of the genres as "horse operas,"2 pleasant but inconsequential popcorn flicks.

Contrary to the prevailing critical opinions of the time and beliefs that survive

even to this day, the Western was not merely a fun and occasionally silly cinematic

diversion, but often an accurate barometer of social and political events. As scholar Jane

Tompluns wrote, "[The Western's] general reputation as a serious representation of life

has been vastly lower than what it deserves. People think of Westerns as light

entertainment, adolescent and escapist, but there is nothing trivial about the needs they

answer, the desires they arouse, or the vision of life they portray. One of the hallmarks of

the genre is an almost desperate earnestness."' Since its inception as a form of mass

perhaps even the foremost, component of popular culture. As such, they have existed as

a mirror of the national consciousness, reflecting the various subjects of contemporary

events and public dialogue.4

The origins of the Western as an artistic genre are complicated and murky,

emerging from a long history of folklore and tall tales that reached an early apogee with

the works of James Fenimore Cooper. Despite his literary accomplishments and the

extensive tradition of Western novels and travel diaries, the genre was most popular and

artistically refined on screen. Beginning in Ithe early 1900s and extending until the 1970s,

the Western was the most enduringly popular genre in film. It was seemingly impervious

to changing times, rising production costs, and the recycling of customary plotlines.

Even after the arrival of television diminished the commercial strength of "B" Westerns,

the major releases remained as well-liked as ever. To an extent, this was the result of

good directors and the use of scenic backdrops that played to the strengths of the

developing visual medium. But these factors do not fully explain the overwhelming

popularity of Westerns for there were plenty of movies that were successes despite poor

camerawork and bad directing. The ongoing esteem which Westerns enjoyed was vividly

comfort us with the feeling that, whatever global and unpredictable changes are taking

Westerns were popular because they appealed to the way that American viewed

their nation's past. Historian Wayne Sarf claimed that the Western has "provided what

comparisons for they indicate the extent to which the Western was rooted in myth rather

than literal history. Westerns are essential elements in what may be termed the American

perhaps the most in-depth academic exploration of the Western genre, explained, "Myths

are stories drawn from a society's history that have acquired through persistent usage the

power of symbolizing that society's ideology and of dramatizing its moral

conscio~sness."T~h e mythological cachet of the Western stems from two seminal ideas

doctrine of Manifest Destiny. In 1893, Turner presented an essay titled "The

Significance of the Frontier in American History" to a conference of historians at the

World's Columbian Exposition. The central idea of the paper, which was to become very

famous and influential, was that the frontier promoted the growth of individualism,

democracy, national identity, and American political institutions.' Manifest Destiny, a

exceptionalism, and thus, its divine obligation to expand across the American continent,

spreading democracy and freedom. This concept was famously immortalized in painter

which showed a large group of settlers treklung across the rough Western landscape and

pointing heroically to the sunlit lands beyond the ~ o c l u e sT. ~ak en together, these

concepts established the West as a landscape of American ideals, a place that embodied

all the positive and unique characteristics of the fledgling nation.

The Western has numerous sub-genres, including revenge stories, cavalry-and-

Indian movies, pioneer epics, and Civil War narratives. But almost all movies in the

genre fall into two categories: traditional or revisionist. The traditional Western was the

movie that supported and adhered to the mythology of the American West. Will Wright,

Westerns, asserted that "the formal structure of a myth is embodied in a symbolic content

that is socially specific. This content presents characters and events, telling a story that

society's members understand and enjoy. Both consciously and unconsciously the myth

relates to the individual's experience as a social and historical being."10 There were

many facets to the traditional Western, though its rules were strongly codified. As film

theorist Robert Warshow wrote, "It is an art form for connoisseurs, where the spectator

derives his pleasure from the appreciation of minor variations within the working out of a

pre-established order."" The traditional Western presented a struggle between good and

evil wherein the two forces were rigidly defined and starkly contradictory with no

cowboys, homesteaders, farmers, sheriffs, and legendary gunslingers who cultivated the

territories and shifted the frontier westward by introducing law and order. These

protagonists battled against the forces of savagery and chaos, whether they were Indians,

malevolent outlaws, or the untamed wilderness. And when they succeeded, they shaped

not only their personal victory, but also the triumph of the American mythology. As film

historian Jacquelyn Kilpatrick claimed, "The West made a perfect crucible for the

development of a mythology intrinsically ~merican."'~

This struggle provided the basic framework for what I call the Western metanarrative,

a storyline in which the toughness and gunfighting prowess of the mythic male

This general scenario most resembles Wright's description of the "classical plot," which

"revolves around a lone gunfighter hero who saves the town, or the farmers, from the

town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the

~choolmarrn."T~h~o ugh this narrative lent itself to a certain amount of variety, as is

evident from the several sub-genres mentioned earlier, there were strict rules regarding

mythic hero must righteously vanquish the evil outlaws or savages. As such, the hero

was unfailingly honorable and peaceful, but quick and deadly with a gun or his fists.

Film scholar John Lenihan noted, "The Western translated a relatively brief segment of

American history into an idealization of socially responsible individualism, of a

transitional social order both needing and permitting personal freedom and the exercise of

for viewers in which he enforced justice in a simplistic moral universe with the intrinsic

authority of his personality and gun belt. This was a world where "a man could do what

he had to do with an instinctive natural awareness of right and wrong."15 Doubtlessly,

this element was key to the genre's popularity. The story of these idols always took place

in the latter half of the 1 9c~ent~ury so that the moral absolutism of the conflicts that

appeared on screen would not be tainted by the uncertainties and problems of the

contemporary world.

Such heroes were always white males in order to appeal to the racial and cultural

hegemony in Ihe United States. Blacks almost never appeared in traditional Westerns.

When they did, it was usually in stereotyped, minor role such as the obedient steamboat

occupied positions that ranged from amusing sideluck to menacing bandit, but they never

played heroic leads. Women were similarly excluded from important roles. They were

usually present and sometimes functioned as elements in the story, but without enough

agency to change the course of events. As Tompluns wrote, "[P]recious though they

presumably are since so much blood is shed to save them, their lives are devalued by the

narrative, which focuses exclusively on what men do. Westerns pay practically no

attention to women's e~~erience."A'~lm ost all traditional Westerns ignored females and

blacks, or acknowledged them only peripherally. That does not mean they did not appear

in Westerns, but rather that they were only rigidly defined characters often caught up

helplessly in the flow of the narrative. As Michael Coyne, a scholar of Westerns,

Even Indians, such an integral element in the West of popular imagination, were

mostly stereotyped characters with predestined places in the archetypal Western plot.

for audiences back East, painting a picture of a land filled with adventure, danger, and

plenty of hostile, savage natives. Even more popular in the latter decades of the century

were Wild West shows, the most prominent of which was Buffalo Bill Cody's. These

forms of popular entertainment codified a traditional view of American Indians that was

incredibly long-lasting and fixated around the common dichotomy between brutal killers

and peaceful, but uncivilized barbarians." Such typecasting formed the two predominant

Indian stereotypes of the "bloodthirsty savage" and the "noble savage." The former was

whoops. He was Stagecoach's Geronimo and The Last of the Mohican's Magua rolled

up into one, and engaged in violence for fun or simply because it was intrinsic to his

nature. The "noble savage" was a simplistic and peaceful creature, supremely at home in

the wilderness, but powerless before superior white civilizations. He was loyal to his

white conquerors and often operated as a faithful retainer to the protagonist.20 Regarding

the Native American in traditional Westerns, French wrote, "At best he was the noble

savage of Fenimore Cooper, sharing the same qualities of primitive grandeur which

resided in the challenge of the wild terrain and harsh climate. At worst he followed a

tradition established by early Victorian melodrama: he was treacherous, bloodthirsty,

uncompromising, threatening rape, mutilation and death."21 Here, the Indian functioned

as the ultimate symbol of evil, providing a suitably odious antagonist for the heroic white

male.

There were few movies more representative of the traditional Western than John

Ford's My Darling Clernentine (1946). A retelling of the Wyatt EarpIGunfight at the

O.K. Corral story, it depicted one of the central myths of the American West. The film

pitted the noble Earp played by Henry Fonda against the villainous Clanton family.

Belonging to a sub-genre that might be called the "town Western," the movie featured

murder one of his younger brothers. He then sets about ridding the town of its various

undesirable elements, including an alcoholic Indian and a flirtatious mestizo woman.

"What kind of a town is this, anyway? Selling liquor to Indians. Indian, get out of town

and stay he says after subduing the drunken Indian Charlie from shooting up a

saloon. The movie celebrated the victory of law over anarchy and the gradual

the community dance in which Earp glides around with Clementine, the newly arrived

schoolteacher. According to Coyne, "Clernentine celebrates the West and America as a

perfectible society, but true citizenship therein is morally and racially exclu~ionist."~'

Beginning in the postwar era, directors of Westerns began questioning some of

the themes and elements of the Western mythology. Revisionist Westerns were quite

simply movies that deconstmcted or subverted any of the essential ideological themes

and motifs of the traditional Western. What began with several movies that subtly

modified some of the rules of the genre became a trend that grew increasingly powerful

in the 1960s as previous conventions were rewritten. From Red River in 1948 to the

quick demise of the Western's commercial viability during the 1970s, the genre was

influenced by numerous contemporary events. McCarthyism, the Cold War, the Civil

Rights movement, Indian empowerment, the counterculture, and the Vietnam War all had

a great affect on Westerns, changing the way they portrayed issues of race, gender,

military conflict, and politics. In turn, the demythologization provided by revisionist

Westerns reflected changing understandings of the American past.

I intend to focus this thesis around close analysis of 14 thematically significant

and, for the most part, commercially successful Westerns. They exemplify the major

trends of revisionist Westerns over the course of three decades. A number of other films

from several genres will be used to provide context. In order to gauge public discourse

regarding these movies and the issues they raised, I will examine contemporary reviews

from a wide selection of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The

Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Saturday

Review, The New Republic, Life, and others. I will also utilize a range of material relating

to history, cinema, and other pertinent subjects by important scholars and theorists. This

thesis will not explore the contemporary events that influenced Westerns in great detail,

nor will it strive to capture fully the public dialogue regarding such issues. Certain

revisionist subjects, such as the treatment of women and gender, are not afforded major

analysis. These tasks are beyond the scope of this paper. Rather, my goal is to examine

the commentary of Westerns on these important subjects and how revisionist Westerns

began changing the way people thought about American history and mythology.

Chapter One analyzes how Red River and The Searchers began to deconstruct the

status of the mythic male protagonist. The second chapter provides an examination of

two modem Westerns, Lonely Are the Brave and Hud, that traversed the chronological

boundaries of traditional Westerns in order to present messages about contemporary

society. Chapter Three explores the changing treatment and portrayal of Indians in

Westerns from the 1940s to the 1970s as the federal government instituted termination

policies and the American Indian Movement became a major force. Chapter Four

focuses on the influence the Vietnam War had on the genre and movies such as The

Professionals, The Wild Bunch, and Little Big Man. The final chapter scrutinizes how

Westerns, especially Spaghetti Westerns, began depicting explicit violence and became

force.

coined by silent-era Western star William S. Hart. Though its usage faded has faded considerably in recent

decades, it still appeared occasionally until the 1980s. The term is unfamiliar, however, to most modern

1992), 10-11. Tompkins' assertion became increasingly true as the years passed after World War I1 and

Westerns took themselves ever more seriously as important cultural documents.

For a current example, look at the spate of movies about imperialism that have been released in recent

years. These films respond to the contemporary concern about United States foreign policy.

appeal of Westerns differently: "This West functions as a symbol of freedom, and of the opportunity for

conquest. It seems to offer escape from the conditions of life in modern industrial society: from a

mechanized existence, economic dead ends, social entanglements, unhappy personal relations, political

injustice. The desire to change places also signals a powerful need for self-transformation. The desert light

these things promise a translation of the self into something purer and more authentic, more intense, more

(New York: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983), 10.

Atheneum, 1992), 5.

1994), 31-60.

the U.S. Capitol. It is currently located at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The museum's website

provides this exhibition label: "Leutze's mural study for the Capitol Building in Washington celebrated the

idea of Manifest Destiny just when the Civil War threatened the republic. The surging crowd of figures

records the births, deaths, and battles fought as European Americans settled the continent to the edge of the

Pacific. Like Moses and the Israelites who appear in the ornate borders of the painting, these pioneers stand

at the threshold of the Promised Land, fulfilling what many nineteenth-century Americans believed was

God's plan for the nation." http://americanart.si.edu.

Nebraska Press, 1999), 5.

Border," Noel Carroll provided a similar analysis of the classical plot, one doubtlessly influenced by

Wright. He wrote, "[The gunfighter] comes upon a situation where positive social forces are in conflict

with a group of antagonists, noteworthy for their superior talent for violence. Initially, the hero avoids

involvement in the conflict, but eventually enters it on the side of society, defeating assorted villains, to the

advantage of whatever the film regards as positive social forces. The hero is marked by special abilities,

especially martial ones. And, persuaded by reasons of justice, he comes to pit his virtually mythic prowess

(London: British Film Institute, 1998), 47.

Illinois Press, 1980), 15.

Ibid.

York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 4.

Century Fox, 1992), directed by Michael Mann. In the latter film, the villain Magua infamously killed a

white man by cutting out his heart and eating it.

The first harbinger of the revisionist Western appeared in 1948 as the United

sacred elements in the traditional Western: the infallibility, wisdom, and righteousness of

the classic male protagonist. By deconstructing his mythos, they offered substantial

criticism of customary notions of authority and patriarchy. And though neither quite

inhabited the socially turbulent times of the 1960s, which were to prove so influential in

revising the Western genre, they displayed a postwar awareness of the emerging conflicts

and fomenting upheaval that would soon lead the nation into turmoil.

hopelessly conventional. The overriding narrative thrust was that of a male-dominated

carving out a path across tough and unfriendly terrain to bring the resources of the West

(cattle) to the civilization of the East (the railhead in Abilene). At first glance, this story

was nothing more than typical American triumphalism, presenting the tough and

masculine white males of the nascent United States as winners of the West who tamed

the land, fought the Indians, and brought productivity and civilization to where it had

never existed before. However, even as the beautifully filmed labors of these men were

captured on screen and venerated by the basic framework of the plot, the primary subplot

provided the major dramatic tension of the narrative and subtly subverted the towering

authority of the Western's traditional patriarchal protagonist in doing so.

Groot Nadine quit a wagon train, talung a bull with them, in favor of the fertile

ranchlands in Texas to the South. The settlers they leave behind, who include the woman

Dunson loves, are attacked and murdered by Indians. Dunson and Groot soon encounter

the lone survivor of the assault, a young boy named Matt Garth who has a cow with him.

The trio heads to Texas where they form the "Red River D" herd by mating Dunson's

bull to Matt's cow. Fifteen years later, the ranch is the biggest in Texas and Matt (now

no market for cattle in the South and Dunson is facing bankruptcy unless he can get his

cattle to the rail line in Missouri. He gathers his cows together and sets off on the

Chisholm Trail, but not before malung all the cowboys on the ranch sign a pledge to

finish the job. The journey is lengthy and arduous, and soon the men are worlung long

hours on meager rations and little sleep. Dunson grows increasingly obsessed with

getting his cattle to Missouri and becomes tyrannical, pushing the cowboys ever harder.

He also ignores reports of a new railhead in Abilene, Kansas that would make the trip

shorter and help the herd avoid savage Indians and vicious raiders on the Missouri

border. Discontent brews when Dunson threatens to whip a cowpoke who accidentally

caused a stampede and shoots several others who intend to quit the job. When another

group runs away from the trail, he has a posse bring them back, and announces his

intention of hanging them. Matt, finally spurred to action by this latest example of

Dunson's brutal autocracy, assumes leadership and drives the herd to Abilene where he

negotiates a profitable sale. Dunson, however, has hired a band of gunslingers and trailed

Matt to Kansas. In the climactic scene, they engage in a rousing fistfight but when Tess

Millay, the requisite Hollywood love interest that Matt has acquired on the trail,

intervenes, the two come to their senses and quickly re~oncile.~

garnering favorable reviews and becoming the third-highest grossing film in the United

States that year.4 ~ o s lCero~w ther gave it a vivacious and peculiarly colloquial review in

fiction. It's round-up and brandin' time!"' The narrative awkwardness and superfluity of

in a laudatory review that analyzed the genre's popularity and its ability to induce

e~hilaration.P~a uline Kael, normally pretentiously stuffy in her criticism, was equally

the film has become one of the most enduringly popular Westerns. Years later, Roger

female characters into the plot was largely c~ntrived.~

For the most part, contemporary reviews focused on the central narrative thrust:

the romantic evocation of hard, but rewarding labor amid beautiful landscapes. Crowther

effusively praised director Howard Hawks for imbuing the film "with action and

understanding, humor and masculine ranginess. He has made it look raw and dusty,

made it smell of beer and sweat."1° Other reviewers, even Kael, appreciated the blend of

typical Western motifs: "Indian battles, cattle stampedes and deadly gun duels," enthused

idol.'' In this manner, film critics of the time mostly lionized the images of tough men

hard at work on the frontier, carving a nation out of the wilderness. This was hero

worship straight out of the myth of American triumphalism and the overarching metanarrative

of the traditional Western. Indeed, so compelling was this cinematic treatment

took over."12

Nevertheless, though no critic emphasized the subtext of their comments, some

mentioned the peculiarity of the lead protagonist being such a nefarious character for

observing that its characters "behave like real-life people who are neither all good nor all

kills men as casually as the rest of us would swat flies.;'13 In its 1979 obituary for John

altogether a good guy, but one with some depth to him."14 ~ h e swe ere hardly earthshattering

observations, but their casualness obscured the unease regarding the

combination of heroism and tyranny in a Western protagonist.

For most of the movie, Dunson acts like a villain. To acquire the land for his

ranch in Texas, he guns down the representative of the local Mexican landlord. When the

cowboys are rounding up cattle before the drive, he instructs them to brand all of the

animals with the Red River D, even though some of them clearly belong to neighboring

ranches. On the trail, Dunson drinks to mask the pain from an injury and stays up at

night because he is suspicious that his workers will run away. And when the posse

returns with the runaway ranch hands, he has a malevolent, almost sadistic glint in his

eye and tone in his voice as he informs them that he intends to hang them.

During a montage sequence early in the movie, Dunsons says, "Ten years and I'll

have the Red River D on more cattle than you've looked at anywhere. I'll have that

Beef to make them strong, make them grow."15 No words better summarize the pioneer

ideal. That Dunson begins as a mostly noble character, a tough settler determined to

make his fortune on the frontier, makes his development into an autocratic cattle baron all

the more surprising. That this should occur after a 15-year interval and establish Clift's

patriarchy of the traditional Western. In this revisionist representation of the West and its

growth, the young eventually have to take the reins of power from the old. The older

generation of pioneers have worked hard and developed the land, but the youth must

wrest leadership from their unsteady grasp.

There was a historical context for this revisionist theme. Michael Coyne wrote,

Dunson's tyranny prefigures the edgy, occasionally neurotic youth-rebels of iconoclastic

Westerns in the 1950s and early 1960s." The character of Matt foreshadowed the rise of

independent-minded youth in the films to come over the succeeding decades. Coyne

compared Clift's performance with those of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul

Newman in later years, and asserted that "[t]hese were essentially anti-Western antiheroes

who frequently mocked the assumptions of the genre, the national past from which

Westerns sprang and the culture in which they flourished. Above all, such figures

challenged the complacency of Eisenhower's America, which they damned as flaccid,

inert and implicitly hypocritical." As such, Matt Garth became an early predecessor of

the beatnik and hippie ideology of skepticism and eventually outright revolt against

authority figures. More importantly, "Red River was the film which punctured the moral

authority of the mature Western hero, daring to suggest a potentially fatal discrepancy

between age and wisdom. At the heart of the genre which exalted patriarchy, Red River

conclusion of the movie gave it a happy ending, but its message was still one of distrust

for Dunson and the older generation he symbolized. The incredible work he had done

over the course of his life made him so determined and single-minded that he became a

tyrant, set on one goal no matter the cost. For a genre accustomed to stoic, wise male

figures, it was a shoclung departure from formula.

Despite its subversive message about patriarchal authority, Red River certainly

contained more elements of traditional Westerns than revisionist ones. Moreover, it

Yellow Ribbon and Rio ~ r a n d e ,t'h~e latter two films of director John Ford's famous

"Cavalry Trilogy" that celebrated the exploits of the U.S. Cavalry as it fought Indians and

protected settlers across the frontier. After Red River, the next major step in the advent of

the revisionist Western did not come until eight year later with the release of The

Searchers in 1956. Yet, the latter film may never have been filmed without the former.

Some viewers undoubtedly took notice when John Wayne, already the preeminent

symbol of the Western to most Americans by the late 1940s, appeared as a ruthless tyrant

in Red River. More significantly, Ford noticed. In a famous incident, he remarked to a

fellow viewer after seeing the movie that he had never known that Wayne had such

acting abilities.'' It is impossible not to sense the influence of Dunson on the character of

Ethan Edwards, the protagonist of The Searchers, and likewise a figure that undermined

the authority of the patriarchal protagonist by juxtaposing masculine ideals of the

traditional Western with inner demons.

The Searchevs starts three years after the end of the Civil War, when Ethan

Edwards (John Wayne) returns to the Texas ranch of his brother Aaron, his sister-in-law

children. He treats these nieces and nephews with avuncular fondness, but is surly

towards his brother's adopted son Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who is one-eighth

Cherokee. After a group of Texas Rangers arrives the next morning with news of cattle

rustling, Ethan and Martin agree to join a posse in pursuit of the stolen cows. It soon

becomes apparent, however, that the thieving was merely a diversion on the part of local

Comanche Indians who intend to raid the Edwards' ranch house. Ethan and Martin get

back in time to find the house a smoldering wreck, Martha and the men lulled, and the

two daughters, Lucy and Debbie, ludnapped. They set off in pursuit of the raiding party

with the Rangers, but Lucy is found murdered and their companions soon give up the

chase as fruitless. Nevertheless, Martin and Ethan doggedly continue to follow the

Comanches and their leader, Chief Scar (Henry Brandon), with the hope of rescuing

Debbie. Their quest lasts several years and taltes them across various Western

lost his disdain for Martin's Native American heritage, intends to lull Debbie because he

considers her tainted from living with Indians. Finally, they locate the camp where she is

held and Martin lulls Scar. Ethan pauses only to scalp the now dead Indian leader before

pursuing the fleeing Debbie out of the encampment on horseback with the evident

intention of killing her. At the last moment, however, he sweeps her up in his arms and

subsequently returns her to the care of the Jorgensens, a friendly rancher family.

viewing public over the years. Reviews were mixed as many film columnists, perhaps

inured to the customary vapidity of Hollywood, struggled to interpret a morally

convoluted tale from Ford, usually a director of feel-good stories. Crowther applauded

the film with his customary brio: "[A] rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as

impressed by various components of the film like photography, character development,

racism, yet unsure how to analyze it within the context of a genre so habituated to

supremely heroic protagonists. It alternately praised "a film as carefully contrived as a

matchstick castle" and deplored "[tlhe lapses in logic and the general air of incoherence,"

before concluding, in a manner that completely ignored the true tone of the ending, that

"John Wayne seems to have done it once too often as he makes his standardized, end-offilm

disparaging what he believed was the glorification of Ethan despite his obvious bigotry

Many of these contemporary reviews failed to properly examine the thematic

complexity offered by the movie. The constant friction between Ethan and Martin, which

mirrored that between Dunson and Matt in Red River, generated the primary dramatic

tension in the film. In The Seaucheus, however, as opposed to the earlier film, this theme

was tinged by the unmitigated racism of the lead character, which drove him maniacally

towards revenge. Unlike Dunson, who is at first a heroic pioneer, Ethan's nobility and

uncertain from the start. As he rides onscreen in the first scene, his steadfast Confederate

sympathies are evident from the gray sergeant's coat he still wears. When questioned

about his evidently unreconstructed beliefs three years after the war's end, he brusquely

no ploughshare neither."24 Unlike Confederate veterans in other who were

often treated sympathetically, one gathered from his subsequent displays of racism that

Ethan fought in the Civil War primarily for the cause of white supremacy rather than any

notion of defending his native soil. His status as a loyal soldier of the Confederacy

indicated the significance and prevalence in Western history of southerners, who brought

their bigotry with them when they became pioneers.

Throughout the narrative, Ethan's racism and thirst for revenge overshadowed the

across the body of a dead Comanche warrior hastily buried by his brethren in a shallow

grave. Rather than let the body lie in peace, he shoots out the corpse's eyes so that "he

can't enter the spirit land. He has to wander forever between the winds."" Such

unwarranted brutality revealed a violent and sadistic tone in the movie that was foreign to

endeavors. For example, though it was not explicitly stated, it was clear that both Martha

and Lucy Edwards were raped before they were murdered. As scholar Ken Nolley has

written, "The invisibility of [their deaths] both signifies and constructs the unthinkable

horror of [their] murder and supposed ~iolation."W~~ay ne's disclosures of these acts

were two of the most famous and emotionally powerful scenes in his career. "What do

you want me to do, draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me. Long as you

live, don't ever ask me more,"28 he yells when asked about his discovery of Lucy's body.

That John Wayne, "The Duke," an actor so stolid normally in his characterizations would

break down was as surprising as anything in the movie.

There were myriad other moments when it was clear that Ethan's craving for

revenge was stronger than his desire to rescue Debbie. In an early scene, he proposes

raiding Scar's encampment even though it is clear that the Comanches might lull their

hostage if they are attacked. Whenever Ethan and Martin question anyone, Ethan asks

where to find Scar while Martin asks where to find Debbie. Before the final, climactic

attack somebody asla Ethan how many Indians he thinks are in Scar's camp. He

responds, "About a dozen each, enough to go around."29 ~ u r itnhe~ as sault, he finds

Scar's dead body and scalps him, an act that connoted savagery within the genre and was

performed almost exclusively by Indians. As strident as Ethan's longing for vengeance

was, his virulent and fanatical bigotry was even more vociferous. He refuses to accept

Martin as a member of his family and tries to convince him to give up the search several

times because "[Debbie's] no kin to you at all."" During one scene, he blls a buffalo for

meat when he sees a herd, but then continues to shoot others dead so that Comanches will

not be able to use them for food. When Ethan and Martin come across a couple of white

women who were taken captive by Indians for a number of years, Ethan cannot contain

By far the most jarring scene in the movie comes when Ethan, Martin, and Debbie

are finally reunited briefly in New Mexico. As Debbie tries to tell them to leave because

she has become accustomed to her new life, Ethan twirls out his gun and demands that

Martin step aside so that he can shoot Debbie because he considers her tainted by her

forced marriage to Scar and more an Indian than a member of his family.32 With a

clenched gun, he advances upon the pair and the only thing that prevents him from

shooting both is a sudden Comanche attack. Never before had the mythos of the Western

cowboy been so punctured by the realities of hatred and violence. That John Wayne,

archetypal lawman and gunslinger of the genre, would try to kill his own niece because of

his blind loathing for Indians, was a contingency completely alien to the notion of the

noble Western protagonist. More than anything that had come before, this scene

removed some of the glamour and righteousness that had accrued upon the leading men

of the Western genre.

In the famous last scene, Debbie is greeted by the Jorgensens, who escort her into

their home. Martin and Laurie, his love interest in the film, follow them inside. But

Ethan remains outside, standing alone on the porch before turning away and walking into

the empty desert as the door closes behind him. This shot was the reverse of the opening

one, in which Martha Edwards opened the door of her home, walked out, and peered into

the distance to discern the mounted Ethan riding into the narrative. For Ethan, a

vagabond of violence and vengeance, there was no home, no place for him in front of the

Western protagonist as best embodied by John Wayne found no sunset to ride off into, no

home and family to go back to. He was from beginning to end an outsider in the

emerging civilization of the West. He had spent his life in conflict and afterwards

discovered no true place for himself in the West he helped forge.

widespread acclaim until it became admired as one of the greatest Westerns. Its cultural

generation of filmmakers that came of age in the 1970s, most notably Martin Scorsese,

Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Their approbation led many critics to reexamine

the film and subsequently develop a full appreciation for its cinematic artistry.34 Richard

The majority of academics and modern-day critics have focused on the racial

issues raised by Edwards' prejudice and his revulsion to miscegenation, but many have

also analyzed the consequences of these attributes in the deconstruction of the mythic

Western protagonist. A recent assessment by Westerns scholar Arlene Hui noted that

Martin was a far more honorable and virtuous character than Ethan, thus echoing the

generational tension of Red River, though to a greater degree. Her essay concluded, "The

Searchers, while seemingly adhering to the stereotypes of the Western, undercuts them as

man who will always remain outside society and the community."36

Nolley perceived a historical context to the emergent revisionist themes in the

movie. He wrote that they were "reflective of changes in Ford, revealing in some

measure a harsh attitude toward cultural enemies in the climate of 1939, just before the

war, followed by the decay of an initially generous post-war optimism into cynical Cold

War pessimism."37 As such, The Searrhers revealed a culture adjusting to a world order

that offered frightening new dangers and tensions. Thus, "[Tlhe uneasy relations

between the restless hero, half-civilized, half-savage, and the community he benefits"38

becomes, for Nolley, a symbol for cultural anxiety in 1950s America.

Though this interpretation was rooted in an overreliance on historical hindsight

and reached for a bit too much significance, there was undeniable evidence that Ford

crafted the film with a firm understanding of its meaning. In the original novel by Alan

LeMay, Ethan returns directly from the Civil War, not after a three-year hiatus, and

carries with him no especial resentment or hatred for ~ n d i a n s .1~f F~o rd had filmed The

Searchers with this storyline, it would now be a forgotten and unspectacular Western

with no particular significance within the genre's long history. Instead, Ford and

screenwriter Frank S. Nugent added these traits to the character of Ethan to cast doubt

upon the essential infallibility of the traditional Western hero, of which Wayne was the

foremost symbol at this point. Their film reflected a growing cultural suspicion of such

classic authority figures "on the eve of an era in which generational strife helped polarize

U.S. society.7740

mythic qualities of the classic cowboy and gunslinger, which underpinned the entire

malevolence. Though there were other revisionist rumblings within the genre (in 1950,

ever before),41 these two films twisted the tropes of the Western's traditional metanarrative,

planting the seeds of the eventual revisionist revolution that questioned the

idealized American past. Though eight years and different production teams separated

the two projects, their structural and thematic similarities, most evident in the premise of

a younger generation steadfastly committed to morality overcoming the autocratic and at

times homicidal intentions of an older generation led astray by inner manias, precluded

any discreteness. All the revisionist elements that transformed the genre in subsequent

the traditional Western protagonist.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040724/releaseinfo. All information on release dates comes from the

Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com.

directed by John Ford.

fault with the two female characters in the movie. They believed their inclusion in an otherwise maledominated

story was a rather unrealistic concession to Hollywood box office formula.

1948,29.

B8.

George Stevens.

Knows Best" or is just using a phrase of the time. Coyne also makes a couple of other historical

connections, of generally lesser significance. He notes that the warm reception that Matt receives in

Abilene for bringing thousands of steers to a needy market must have had relevance to an American

populace that had withstood food shortages during the Great Depression and World War 11. He also

believes that the opposing types of leadership skills displayed by Dunson and Matt purposefully provided

examples of good and bad labor relations soon after an era of widespread industry strikes in the U.S.

Corporation, 1950), directed by John Ford.

legend as an amusing anecdote that in some way perhaps represents the growing awareness of not only a

greater depth to Wayne's acting but to the significance and meanings of the entire Western genre. It is also

four other leading roles and seven minor ones.

essays and reviews have ventured several estimates, ranging from two years to ten.

contains both Union and Confederate veterans, who ride together in obvious harmony with no

Spade Frankie Wilson (Millard Mitchell) are friendly with Sgt. Wilkes (Jay C. Flippen) even after they

realize they fought on different sides in the Battle of Bull Run. Also, it is clear after Matt Garth returns

traditional Western protagonist, but also a major theme itself with a definite historical context. This subject

will be discussed in a later chapter within the framework of the treatment and depiction of Indians in

revisionist Westerns.

- -

1981), 10.

directed by Anthony Mann.

When Frederick Jackson Turner declared that the frontier had closed according to

data drawn from the 1890 U.S. Census, he not only drew a boundary through the timeline

of American history, but also one across the chronology of Westerns. With the exception

part between the end of the Civil War and 1890. The mythic individualism and dignity of

the cowboy did not allow any of the classic Western stars like Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, or

John Wayne to cross this latter date. If they rode into a dusty, desert town only to find

telephone poles and automobiles, it would be too incompatible for audiences to accept.

The gunslinger's mastery of Western sk~llsa nd traits was limited both to a geographic

section of the country and to one of its historical eras. How would the Western

protagonist, armed with his trusty Colt Peacemaker, defeat the villains if they used

modem technology like cars and machine guns? Traditional Westerns could not face

such a question for their mise-en-scknes were too closely associated with a particular

epoch.

released in the early 1960s, they provided a revisionist analysis of the genre's

fundamental underpinnings. Philip French wrote,

Seen out of his time and place, the Western hero seems an incongruous figure.

Depending on the dramatic use to which he may be put, he can be variously seen

as vulnerable and pathetic or dangerous and anarchic, an upholder of cherished

traditional values or the embodiment of outmoded ways which linger menacingly

on, a challenge to modem conformity or the incarnation of a past that must be

reje~ted.~

This description of chronologically transplanted cowboys was almost an exact depiction

Bannon, and Jack Bums. By presenting traditional cowboys in a modern, mechanized

West, these movies juxtaposed cultural and historical understandings of America's past

with its present. The result was two films that deconstructed the myth of the cowboy as a

timeless figure of the nation's virtue and revealed his obsolescence in a more

contemporary era.

extended chase scene. Jack Burns ( a r k Douglas) is a traditional cowboy living in a

modern world. He herds animals across deserted landscapes for a living, but cannot

ignore the increasing encroachment of fences, barbed wire, and other symbols of private

property on the formerly open plains. Arriving with his new horse Whiskey at the home

of old friend Paul Bondi and his wife Jerry, with whom Bums was once in love, he

discovers that Paul has been imprisoned for assisting illegal Mexican immigrants. Loyal

to a fault, Bums gets himself arrested in order to help his friend break out, but discovers

that Paul is resolved to serve his sentence and return to his wife and child a free man.

Burns escapes by himself and heads to the nearby mountain ranges, where he is pursued

quarry. After a series of close calls, he makes his way over the mountains and into a

dense pine forest with an open path to Mexico and f r e e d ~ mB. ~u t in a final ironic twist,

Whiskey becomes sluttish while crossing a highway in the rain and is struck by a passing

truck. Rider and horse fall into a nearby ditch, injured and immobile. The police arrive,

shoot Whiskey to put her out of her misery, and take the despondent Bums away to the

hospital.5

Almost completely ignored at the box office, Lonely Are the Brave garnered

mostly favorable reviews from critics. Howard Thompson commented in The New York

Times, "With a tiny cast, the simplest of story situations and a sure understanding of

human behavior, this quietly penetrating film is a joy to ~ a t c h . "M~a e Tinee was equally

laudatory in the Chicago Daily Tvibune: "It's a small classic, and a parable with a

peculiarly American flavor. It is also tremendously suspenseful and delicately

balan~ed."T~h e reviewer for the Los Angeles Times commended the "vivid storytelling,

however. Writing in Film Quavtevly, Sydney Field acknowledged that the film "does

succeed in partially shattering the confining traditions of the Western as a cinematic

genre," but concluded that its "present-day setting cannot lift it from the category of the

remarking that the movie's screenplay "struck me as a shoddy and remarkably simpleminded

song of hatred for twentieth-century American society."10

Time focused more on the thematic implications of Lonely Ave the Brave and

asked, "Is the untamed free spirit an outlaw that must learn to toe the white lines of the

modem world or perish?"" Following this line of thought, Arthur Knight of Saturday

Review examined the movie's meanings within the structure of the Western genre and

with regard to the contemporary world, offering the most analytical thoughts of any

reviewer. He wrote, "[Tlhe West has been stripped of every legend except its legendary

beauty; and in their place is the sad realization that the breed of men we once admired

have become misfits in a society that only dimly comprehends their values." He

concluded by observing, "It is not the sheriff or his posse that overtakes the fugitive,

What Gill saw as a statement of neo-luddism was less an attack on technological advance

than a commentary on the genre as a form of mid-century popular culture. The film

presented the incongruity of the Western rnythos as embodied by the iconic cowboy and

modernity represented by advanced technology. This was apparent from the first shot,

which opens on an uninhabited, desert prairie and pans down to reveal Burns lying by a

small campfire with all the classic accoutrements of the cowboy: jeans, boots, kerchief,

Stetson, saddle, and cigarette clenched between his teeth. As he lies back with hat tipped

forward over his eyes, a loud rumbling becomes apparent. He removes his hat and looks

up to see the vapor trails of three jet airplanes passing overhead. Soon after, he is

stopped on the plains by a barbed wire fence that bears a placard reading, "Closed Area,

continues riding Whisltey.13

Bums explains his personal philosophy of complete independence and personal

freedom to Jerry early in the film:

the more fences there are, the more he hates them.

Jerry: I've never heard such nonsense in my life.

Burns: It's true, though. Did you ever notice how many fences there are getting

to be? The signs they got on them: "No hunting, no hiking, no admission, no

trespassing, private property, closed area, start moving, go away, get lost, drop

Burns, whose background is rarely mentioned, was less a real person than a

representation of the traditional Western cowboy, an archetype of the self-reliant white

male protagonist who forged a land and society of his own out of lawless and hostile

territory. Thus, Bums and characters like him in other modem Westerns were

"influenced by, or are victims of, the cowboy cult; they intensify and play on the

viewers that the United States was created by noble heroes who ensured its contemporary

and future prosperity and moral fortitude. Lonely Are the Brave provided an ironic twist

by confronting modem America with a figure that it celebrates and recording his disgust

with their way of life. As Jane Tompluns observed, "The movie catches the audience in

an emotional double bind, filling us with longing for a mode of life that it then declares

extinct before our very eyes. It makes us love the hero and his horse and at the same time

shows us that we represent the civilization that has lulled them."16

Despite his obvious autonomy, Bums was a very lonesome and depressing figure.

At one point he explains to Jerry why he would have been a bad husband for her: "I'm a

loner clear down deep to my very guts. Know what a loner is? He's a born cripple. He's

crippled because the only person he can live with is himself. It's his life, the way he

wants to live it. It's all for him."17 When Jack rides off into the desert away from the

Bondi household with Jerry loolng at him from the porch, it seems just like a shot out of

The Searchers, with Douglas mimicking John Wayne and his realization that the Western

hero has no true home for himself. According to Michael Coyne, "Society is clearly

adjudged at fault for marginalizing [men such as Jack Bums]: it cannot accommodate

them gracefully, it does not value their experience, it condemns their brand of

individualism as outmoded. If their lonely lives are their own tragedies, their lonely

deaths are society's; and perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that society does not realize

how much poorer it is for their passing."1s

Bums9 suffering extends beyond mere loneliness; he is bloodied and beaten on a

consistent basis. It was shoclung that such distress would afflict him for the protagonist

might get into plenty of fights in traditional Westerns, but he was rarely hurt or injured.

In order to get into jail, Burns starts an extended bar fight, and when the police arrive to

arrest him, he clashes with them as well. In prison, a sadistic prison guard brutalizes him

on a whim, knockng out one of his teeth in the process. And during his final run from

the authorities, Bums takes a bullet in the leg. He is hounded at almost every moment of

his escape, most notably by a helicopter, which becomes a symbol of overbearing

technological invasiveness of the modem world, as contrasted with Burns' noble horse,

Whiskey. Its hovering presence becomes almost a paranoid manifestation of Big Brother

in a world that will not leave a free spirit alone.19

Ultimately, Whiskey became just as symbolic of the traditional Western as her

owner. At one point Bums has the opportunity to make an easy escape from those

traclung him by climbing a ridge and leaving Whiskey behind. Despite trying to justify

the action to himself, he is too devoted to his horse to abandon her. Tompkins wrote,

"[Tlhe movie equates the hero with his horse and both with everything the bureaucratic,

freedom from rules and routines, and the right to enjoy life."20 In the final scene, when

Whiskey is mercifully shot dead by the police, the light goes out of Burns' eyes when he

hears her stop whinnying. As they put him into an ambulance, the truck driver

responsible for the accident asks, "Is he gonna be okay?"21 We already know that the

answer is no. At the most crucial moment in his escape, Burns elects to stay with

Whiskey rather than take the easy path to freedom. As film historian Richard Robertson

observed, "[His] loyalty to his way of life is symbolized by the horse that he refuses to

leave behind even when sure escape beckons."22

Burns' identity was inextricably bound with that of his horse, and Whisltey's

death prefigured his own metaphorical death. Even if he were to survive, he would spend

years in prison, and as he stated earlier, he could not possibly survive such an ordeal. As

Bums is taken to the hospital all that remains is his hat, lying in the highway and splashed

by rainwater spray from passing cars, the only remaining monument to a hero and a

without the clear moral prerogatives of the fabled American past.

the former movie a year later in 1963. According to French, both films adopted the

setting of "the present-day West where lawmen, rodeo riders and Cadillac-driving

ranchers are still in thrall to the frontier myth."" They were also filmed in black and

however, offered a more complex narrative with several parallel plots and subplots, as

well as four main characters to drive the action. Its vision of the West was just as

bittersweet as Lonely Are the Brave's, but more nuanced, revealing a traditional society

faltering amid a modernity that has complicated its long-term sense of morality.

Hud Bannon (Paul Newman) is the scurrilous, hard-drinking, wise-crachng,

charismatic, surly, and thoroughly hedonistic son of old rancher Homer Bannon (Melvyn

Douglas). He lives and works on Homer's ranch in Texas with his orphaned nephew

Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde) and their sharp-tongued housekeeper, Alma Brown (Patricia

Neal). One morning, Homer summons Hud back to the ranch on his day off to look at a

cow that has died mysteriously. Unable to discern the cause of death, Homer resolves to

call the state veterinarian, against the advice of his son. When the vet arrives, he

identifies foot-and-mouth disease as the probable source of the problem and tells Homer

that if tests confirm his suspicions, the government will liquidate his entire stock of cattle.

It soon becomes apparent that Hud and Homer have a poisonous relationship and that

both serve as contrasting models of adult behavior for Lonnie, who begins the movie

idolizing the fast-living ways of his uncle but ultimately follows the path of his

grandfather. Three events bring tensions to a boil: the destruction of the ranch's cattle;

Hud's subsequent effort to wrest control of the ranch by having his father declared

mentally unfit; and Hud's drunken attempt to rape Alma, withwhom Lonnie is clearly

infatuated. As a result, Homer dies from grief, Alma departs town, and Lonnie leaves the

ranch, resolved to make his own way in the world apart from his uncle.25

Hud received nearly universal praise from critics, and in the ultimate sign of

Knight praised its "first-rate film-malung" in Saturday Review and, in an attempt to

indicate what he saw as the movie's broad, national appeal, wrote that it had "the stamp

of authentic Americana, a stamp that can be recognized because its subsurface values are

so authentically American as well."27 Newsweek described Hud as "an integrated,

coherent, sophisticated movie," and in The New Yorker, Gill called it "an interesting and

lively exercise in the apparently never-to-be-exhausted Western genre."28 The critic for

The New Republic, who was more interested with the thematic implications of the film,

gaunt demanding country and the men who live by answering its demands."29

One of the foremost challenges for any viewer of Hud was accepting the titular

of the classic portrayal of the heroic male protagonist. This was a testament to the

magnetic performance of Newman, whose prodigious talent and good loolcs, which lifted

him to iconic status in American cinema, were on full display. Nevertheless, despite his

charisma and easy way with words, it was evident that Hud was not a lovable rascal, but

rather the villain of the story. French referred to the character as a "a perversion of

Western ideals, the decadent fag end of a tradition seen at its best in his father."30 This

assertion curiously reversed the generational divide established in Red River and The

Searchers, lionizing Homer as a representation of the mythical old West and castigating

Hud and his modem ways as a corruption of the elder Bannon's ideals.

Hud's first appearance in the movie comes while leaving a tryst he has just had

with a mamed woman. Surprised by her husband moments later, Hud accuses Lonnie of

committing the adulterous deed. A thorough womanizer, he continues to consort with

other people's wives throughout the movie, saying at one point, "The only question I ever

ask any woman is, 'What time is your husband coming home?"'" He further displays his

callousness by driving his flamboyant Cadillac recklessly, despite being responsible for

thorough disrespect for the law and the advice of his father. In one scene, Hud shoots at

some buzzards gathering around a dead cow to drive them away:

there's a law against lulling buzzards.

And that's what I try to do: sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to

the other.

The ultimate sign of his egotism comes when he discovers Alma at the bus station, about

to leave town because of his attempt to rape her. Completely unrepentant, he drawls, "I'll

remember you, honey. You're the one that got away.""

The primary conflict in the movie is between Hud and Homer with the fate of the

ranch and the future of young, impressionable Lonnie on the line. It is apparent that 17-

year-old Lonnie looks up to Hud and wants to emulate some of his rowdy, hard-drinking

ways. As Hud tells stories from his wild past, Lonnie listens with enthusiasm and

declares his intention to follow the same path at some point. But at the same time, he is

close to and tremendously loyal to his grandfather, who represents an older, more

hardscrabble and honest West. The tension between the examples of the two elder

Bannons becomes clear for Lonnie when Homer tells him, "Little by little the look of the

your own mind one day about what's right and what's wrong."34

This juxtaposition of father and son revealed Homer as the vanishing traditional

figure of the honorable, law-abiding cowboy in the West. Their verbal battles forced

viewers to "[confront] the old virtues of the West with the corrupt values of the

burgeoning twentieth-century commercial civili~ation."H~o~m er obviously comes from

an earlier time, and in one scene reminisces at the sight of two longhorn cows,

remembering when such a breed was common throughout the land. When the state

veterinarian informs him that his cattle will have to be shot and suggests drilling for oil

on his land instead, he rejects the advice despite Hud's enthusiasm for it: "There'll be no

wells? I can't ride out every day and prowl amongst them, like I can my cattle. I can't

of pride in them, 'cause they ain't none of my doing."36 Hud, on the other hand, is a

"Cadillac" Cowboy, most comfortable speeding down roads in his